Shopping Cart

How to choose an LED sign

What you need to know about a suitable electronic sign for your business

Before selecting an LED sign you need to consider lots of parameters. The most important parameters are the size of display, location of display, viewing distance, type of contents and communication methods. Installation is also play an important roles and affects type of LED, material or communication methods.

The above parameters impact on which digital signage model is suitable for your business. Let's start with the general information and concepts of LED signs.

How to choose the right LED sign

If you need to choose the best LED sign for your business, you need a careful planning and consideration to choose the best option for your needs. In this quick guide, we have tried to explain the basics of LED sign and LED displays to help you for better decision. However, the most important step to decide about an electronic sign is consulting with an expert supplier company to advise you about available product for your specific needs. We recommend you to fill out the online quotation form and our LED experts will get back to you with the best available products and solution for your specific needs.

What is an LED display?

LED display or LED sign is an electronic sign consists of a matrix of individual LED lights (LED pixels) that make image, text or video together. LED pixels are placed very close together and from relatively far distance the eyes won’t be able to see the gap between the pixels result in an acceptable image quality with minimum pixilation. Compare to LCD digital signage (like TV), LED signs and LED displays provide lower resolution due to lower number of pixels. But, brightness and colour production is much more eye-catching which is necessary for outdoor and behind the window digital signage.

Viewing Distance

The most important factor of LED signage is viewing distance. If your sign will be viewed from long distance by people in the car driving fast then you need a big character size to make it readable. As a rule of tomb you need at least 2 inch of character height for each 100ft of viewing distance to make it readable. For full-colour sign with image and video support you may need bigger size to make better impact on viewer.

Traffic Pattern

Another important factor in size of digital signage is traffic pattern. If your sign will be viewed in by people in relatively close distance (like shopping centres) you can choose smaller size with higher resolution (pixel pitch).

Advertising Media

The size of digital signage also depends on advertising material. If you decided to use scrolling text only LED display, you can choose minimum character height. But, if decide to have full-colour led sign to use advantage of an eye catching LED sign with image, backgrounds and video support then you need to make it bigger to have more room for image, background and other animated object on your digital LED signage.

Pixel Pitch and resolution

Pixel pitch is center to center distance of pixels. The shorter pixel pitch the higher resolution. Viewing distance is the main factor to decide about the pixel pitch. For normal indoor LED sign with image and video support P6 LED modules (6mm pitch) is a standard resolution. However, in some case required high resolution or very close viewing distance P4 LED modules (4mm pitch) is recommended. For outdoor application P8 or P10 (8mm and 10mm pixel pitch) for short viewing distance and P16 modules (16mm pitch) for far viewing distance are mostly used.

P8 Module (8mm pitch)

P10 Module (10mm pitch)

P16 Module (16mm pitch)

Communication Methods

Synchronous control cards

This type of LED control card need a computer system to show advertising media on LED display. This type of control card are suitable for application you need to change your display media very often or you need to show lots of media on it (like huge outdoor TVs or huge billboards). There are different synchronous control cards with network, Wi-Fi or GPRS options.

Asynchronous control cards

Unlike the synchronous control cards, asynchronous control cards don’t need any computer to control it. All advertising media is saved in internal memory then control card play it according to the programmed schedule. This type of control card is suitable for any applications doesn’t need every day update like business LED signs, School LED Signs, behind the window LED sign. This type of control card is available with USB, cable, Wi-Fi or GPRS option.

Need help for a suitable LED sign for your business?

More articles about how to select the right LED sign

When it comes to repair and maintenance of LED signs, the biggest part of the costs is associated to lift and labor costs. Specifically, outdoor LED signs which sometimes need heavy lifts and lots of hours for repair and maintenance. The question is, how we can minimize the repair and maintenance cost? and what are the most important factors in repair costs? One of the most important factors that effect the repair costs is LED sign cabinet type.

When it comes to outdoor advertising, a proper use of images, text, color and timing in advertising media is very important. As I described in previous article about How to make effective contents for LED signs, lots of factors needed to be considered to make an affective message for LED signs. In this article, I am going to focus more on outdoor LED signs and basic requirements of outdoor advertising.